


Staying Asleep

by Tzalmavet



Category: OFF (Game)
Genre: Alternating Character POV, Gen, Multiperspectivity, Pre-Canon, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-18 05:12:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11284389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tzalmavet/pseuds/Tzalmavet
Summary: Things are going well, so the Batter takes some time to rest.





	Staying Asleep

The Batter patrolled the winding, black halls of the Room.  He took a peek inside every closet and chamber he passed, looking for spectres.  He'd been circling around for a very long time, but he was having a hard time finding any to purify.  That was a good thing, of course, but he couldn't be too careful.

He stopped walking and listened.  He could hear faint voices in the distance, but they weren't the voices of spectres.  He crouched down and lifted the corner of a rug, but nothing flew out from underneath it.

The Batter stood up and twirled his bat.  Damn, where _were_ they?  It was weird having nothing around to take a swing at.  He tilted his head to the side and listened to the distant voices again.  He got a rough idea of where they were coming from, and set off in that direction.  The Batter could never puzzle out exactly how the Room was laid out, but he usually ended up where he was supposed to be.

And sure enough, it wasn't long before he came into the room where the voices were coming from.  The Queen and the son were inside, stacking little plastic blocks at a table and chatting away.  The Batter wasn't sure what their conversation was about, but it was probably important, so he didn't interrupt them.

He took a glance under the table, and into the corners of the room, and there were still no spectres.  He poked his bat into the place in the air where some phantoms had liked to hide before, but there was nothing there to poke.  The room was already pure.

The Batter leaned back against a wall.  No spectres...  He looked over to see how the boy and the Queen were doing.  They were both smiling, the boy stacking his blocks and the Queen talking to him and watching him closely.  The Batter sighed.  It was times like these, when his own and the Queen's purposes were filled out properly, that everything felt right and he could let his mind go blank.

Things had actually been going well quite consistently, as of late.  The Queen had made the time in her royal schedule to attend to the task of minding their creator, and it felt like forever since the Batter had crossed any phantoms to purify.  The Batter had spent an unpleasant amount of time thinking about the Room eventually being at this point, and now that it had become a reality, he had nothing to think about at all.

Just the way he liked it.

The Queen stood from her chair and picked up the boy, cradling him in her arms.  The boy coughed, but she was there to comfort him, and would probably get him something soothing to drink, shortly.

"Good evening, Batter," the Queen said, finally acknowledging the purifier.  He nodded.

"And what have you been up to?" she asked.

"Nothing," the Batter replied, "The hallways and their rooms are pure."

"That is very good, Batter," the Queen smiled.  Of course it was good.  It was _pure._

"You've been working very hard," she continued, "Don't you think you deserve some rest for all you've done?"  The Batter stared at her.  A reward seemed kind of unnecessary, he thought.  Purification was what he _did_.  He _lived_ for it.  He didn't need any rewards for conforming to his purpose, and neither did the Queen for hers.

"If I sleep, the spirits may return," the Batter said.

"If so, then I'd do my best to keep them away until you awoke," the Queen replied.  The Batter wasn't sure how to feel about that.  If there were spectres about, why not wake him up so he could handle them himself..?

"We can set up a bed for you to rest in," she went on, "A little break might do you some good. How about it?"   _Hmm._  There _was_ evidence that the few times the Batter had slept had provided him with benefits.  Falling asleep was easy, and, more often than not, he awoke with a clear head and renewed energy behind his strikes.  
The Batter had never even thought about sleeping before the Queen had suggested it to him some time ago.  Intentionally causing his body to lose consciousness for the first time had been _weird,_ to put it mildly.  He hadn't slept often since then, but he'd adjusted quickly to the sensation of doing so.

But always, the spectres roamed unchecked when he was asleep.  The Queen _said_ she would keep them away this time, but would she really?  Even if he hadn't seen one for who-knows-how-long, there was no such thing as taking purification too seriously.   _Fucking spectres,_ always ruining everything.  Sin incarnate, every one of them.  Sneaking around, polluting the Room with their ectoplasmic _filth_.

The Batter stared down at a strand of dust on his shoe.  Spectres were always finding new places to hide and new forms to take to camouflage their impurity.  Impurity that he would hunt and eliminate till his dying day.  Evil lurked everywhere, and he knew it when he saw it.  The Batter could only imagine how horrible the world would be without himself in it to beat its spectres back into the shadows, and then beat the shadows up, too.  
Would they ever be completely purified?  Up until recently, things had been looking extremely bleak.  The only thing even remotely resembling comfort to be had was the feeling of swinging his bat into impure spirits and watching them dissipate from the mortal realm.  But he would do it.  Even if it took a million years, he'd purify every single one of them.  He _knew_ what they were about.  They couldn't elude him forever.  The instant they got the _nerve_ to step into the Room, he'd be there with holy word and holy weapon to strike them down, the devils.  They would _suffer,_ and they knew that they _deserved_ it.

The boy in the Queen's arms coughed, catapulting the Batter out of his thoughts.  The Batter felt that the Queen's arm had snaked itself around his waist and frowned.  What the hell was he doing standing around for, wasting precious time, letting her put her big stupid hands all over him again?!  Oh, right.  He remembered.  The Queen had asked him if he wanted to go to bed.

"I guess," the Batter finally replied.  Maybe a quick nap was what he needed to sharpen his searching abilities.

The Queen retracted her hand and gestured to the door.  "This way," she said, and the Batter walked after her into the hall.  As the three of them made their way, Batter kept alert for any spectres.  But still, he didn't detect any.  The walls were undisturbed black, and the only sounds were the little boy's breathing and the Queen's bare feet against the floor.

"Would you like a glass of water?" the Queen asked to the boy.

"Um, not right now," the boy replied.  The boy looked over to the Batter, and the Batter glanced back in silent acknowledgment.  No surprise he'd been doing better with the Queen looking after him.  Health and purity were synonymous in many cases, and it was excellent to see the boy feeling relatively well _and_ a lack of spectres haunting the Room.

The Batter followed the Queen to a little out-of-the-way room.  He stepped in ahead of her; it was pure of phantoms.  Cautiously, he set down his bat, propping it upright against the wall by the doorway.  The room wasn't very large inside, and was empty save for a neatly-made bed against the wall facing the door.

"You'll sleep better if you're not in your day clothes," the Queen said.  She'd told him that quite often, for some reason.  He never understood her obsession with it.  She'd even removed his shoes and hat in his sleep during previous naps he'd taken.  Annoying, since he always put them back on anyways.

But the Batter had never slept in a _bed_ before, and today felt almost like a special occasion, so he slipped off his shoes and unbuttoned his tunic and pants.  He folded his outfit up and stacked the garments in a square pile on the floor.

The Queen walked past him and tugged back the covers of the bed.  She and the boy looked at the Batter expectantly, and he stepped over to the bed and arranged himself under the blankets.

"Are you comfortable, my love?" the Queen asked, pulling the blankets over his chest.  Well... he wasn't _un_ comfortable.  The covers were soft and smooth.  A bit restrictive, but there was no danger around to take advantage of his position, so he guessed it was tolerable.

"Sure," the Batter answered.

The Queen smiled.  He watched her turn her gaze to the child in her hands, adjusting her hold, and the Batter let unconsciousness start trickling into himself.  He felt strangely relaxed, in the bed.  Something about the sight of the boy being cradled attentively in the Queen's arms, where he belonged, as the thoughts in the Batter's head quietly switched off as he drifted away, was giving him a feeling he couldn't identify, but didn't want to leave.  He heard the boy cough, but even that didn't stir him from his reverie.

"Dream sweet dreams," the Queen said, from very far away.

The Batter closed his eyes.  All was well and right with the world as cool, welcome darkness finally overtook him and he fell asleep.

* * *

The Batter awoke to the feeling of pain.  He wasn't even half-conscious yet, and it was already like a white-hot spike was being stabbed deep, deep into his forehead.  Typically, the Batter coped quite well with any discomforts he felt, no matter how unpleasant, preferring not to draw attention to himself.  But _this_ sensation... the pain was so severe, he couldn't hold back a small moan and seized his hat, throwing it to the floor.

Unfortunately, that didn't do much good.  The intensity of the headache throbbed in time with his heartbeat, making him angry at the wretched organ in his chest.  He couldn't open his eyes yet, but he felt _something_ on his face, like cobwebs.  He reached up to wipe them away, but his fingers came away clean.  There was nothing there.

The Batter became aware of the atmosphere around him as he moved towards being fully awake.  The room was freezing cold, and smelled absolutely _sick_ \-- like vomit and old dust.  He coughed and forced himself to sit up.  His head and chest swam violently at the sudden change of positioning, but he didn't want to fall over, and took deep breaths of the acrid air to get a hold on himself.

He rubbed at the inner corners of his eyes and cracked them open.  He couldn't yet tell if he was blinded or not, and he didn't care.  His head hurt like hell, and he missed whatever the fuck he'd felt when he'd first fallen asleep and drifted away, and whatever was after that, and... good lord, were his covers  _sticky?_  How long had he been out?

The Batter turned to face the larger part of the room, shoving away the bedsheets and dangling his legs over the side of the bed.  He saw his white tunic and pants folded up neatly on the floor where he'd left them, meaning the room was just very dark, and he could still see.  Great, he guessed.  
More things, all blurry, swam into view as he dragged himself into a standing position and mechanically slipped on his socks.  Grey and red rings spotted the walls like mold, and tall wiry things, things made of metal and plastic, stood next to the head of the bed.

The Batter gripped the neck of one of the wiry things as he rubbed his fingers into his scalp.  He wondered if maybe the pain would escape his head if he drilled a hole through his skull, but quickly realized that he didn't have a drill, nor did he have the knowledge of how to use one.  He pulled on his pants and tunic as fast as he could, too bleary to tell if he'd even fastened his belt at the right loop; and gathered up his hat, returning it to its rightful place.

The Batter looked to the corner of the room, just beside the door, as he stepped into his cleats.  There was his bat.  Still propped up, just as he'd left it.  He walked over to pick it up, and a tingly feeling shot up his arm as he gripped the handle.

He needed to _leave._

The air was almost too heavy and thick to breathe, he was too cold, his body felt heavy and dried-out, the paint on the floor was peeling up, the walls quivered around him, and distant cries-- the howls of spectres, echoed in his ears.

How he felt and where he was didn't matter anymore as he lifted the bat in his hand.  He was needed elsewhere.  He turned the handle of the metal door and stepped out into the hallway.  He didn't notice the little room crumble in on itself behind him, or its entrance vanish without a trace as he left.

Thankfully, the air in the corridors was nowhere near as noxious as it was in the place he'd woken up in.  It was still freezing, cold enough to see his breath in front of his face, but that wasn't important.  The Batter didn't know where exactly he was going, but he sensed that he was heading in the right direction.  He'd never really gotten to know his way around the place they all lived in, it all looked the same and he usually just followed the sounds of restless spectres and the voice of the Queen.   _Something_ was summoning him, and his legs were moving almost on their own.  Its urgency blared even over the alarms set off in his brain by the nearby spectres.

The Queen had lied again.  The spectres were back, slinking around on the edges of his vision.  He already felt horrible, and knowing that things had gone to hell in his absence managed to make him feel even worse.  But their incoming purification would have to wait on whatever he was being called to.  The Batter made a turn into an open door, and the world held its breath.

There was the son, his creator, sitting on the floor by himself.  He stared at the Batter, and the Batter stared back at him.

It was completely quiet; even the spectres in the halls had gone silent.  He walked a few steps into the chamber and stopped some feet from the boy, who kept staring.  The searing pain in the Batter's head had focused itself into something else, something he couldn't describe.  There was a _reason_ he was there.  The sensation that there was something he needed to _do_ was filling his body like hot water, and his bat, the only thing that seemed real, felt as though it had frozen stuck to his hand.

The boy didn't say anything.  Just sat there, still, with his mouth hanging open and his skinny arms wrapped around an uncooked leg of ham in his lap.  The Batter took a deep breath.  He had to fucking _do something_.  The boy coughed, and the sound made the Batter's stomach burn and his fingernails cut deep into his fists.  His mind was racing a million miles a second, but it had nowhere to go.

He took another step forward.  Why had he been drawn there?  The incredible amount of energy suddenly rushing through his veins was making everything fizzy, and he couldn't even tell if the walls were black or red anymore.  His batting arm was full of pins and needles, he needed to swing, to  _purify_ , but the only thing available to take the urge out on was the small child.  What was going on?

"Batter?"

The Batter snapped cold out of his daze.  The warmth in his flesh evaporating and the spikes of his shoes scraping against the floor were luridly intense as time groaned forwards again and he turned to face the voice behind him.  It was the Queen.  She towered over him, standing in the hall, watching him with an unreadable expression.  The aimless focus glowing in the Batter's body rapidly darkened back to being an unbearable pain in his head, and he was at once wearied and unsound again.

The Batter tried to scowl.  He was too _tired_ to be around the Queen.  He did _not_ want to hear whatever she had to say to him about any of this.  He mumbled tonelessly at her, just wanting her to leave him be, for once.

She didn't respond.  Whatever he'd told her, it must have been really persuasive, because the Queen at once rushed past the Batter to the child's side and knelt down beside him.

She fenced her hands protectively around the boy, and looked back up to the Batter.  "I'll look after ████. Why don't you go and get yourself cleaned up? You don't look very well, Batter," she told him.

The Batter didn't understand a word of what she'd just said, but obediently turned and marched out of the room anyway.  He still felt listless, but the bite had gone out of the cold air.  And his headache, already started fading, dulled further when he took an absent swing at a passing phantom.

He sighed as he walked.  Changing his clothes, taking a shower, and getting something pure to drink suddenly seemed like a really good idea, for some reason.  The endless black walls passed him by, still looking all the same.  The Batter didn't know where exactly he was going, but he sensed that he was heading in the right direction.


End file.
